It was a newspaper article from an Egyptian paper, two decades old, covering a protest rally against the Hudood Ordinance. One of my mother’s friends in Cairo had sent it to me shortly after my mother disappeared, along with a message about the importance of my mother’s role in linking Muslim feminists from around the world; the message sounded too much like a letter of condolence to be bearable, so I tossed it, and the article, into the garbage from where Rabia retrieved them. What Arabic I had learnt in ‘82, the year my mother and the Poet moved from Colombia to Egypt and I visited them over my summer holidays, I had now forgotten, but the text wasn’t what was important about the article.
In grainy black and white, my mother is the centre of both photographs that accompany the text. In the first, she is surrounded by policewomen brandishing lathis. She is holding on, with both hands, to a pole that must have helped support a banner, but she’s been separated from whoever held the second pole, and the banner has ripped in two. They must have held on tight to each pole, she and the other woman, to make that banner tear down the middle as they were pushed apart. The half-banner is furled in on itself, making it impossible to read the words on it. Even so, one of the policewomen is reaching for the pole, which my mother holds upright, resisting the temptation to wield it like a weapon. A second policewoman holds a lathi horizontally. The photographer has caught the moment when the policewoman’s arm recoils after striking my mother across her midriff with the lathi, and my mother is just beginning to double over, mouth open, eyes closed, face strangely serene.
In the second picture she is down on the ground, several of her friends gathered nearby, not daring to help pick her up. A policeman is standing about five feet away from her. In his right hand is a lathi, and in his left a much longer stick, slightly pliant, which he uses to keep my mother pinned to the ground as though she were an animal. But she will not be defeated. Although she’s on the ground, her head is raised, looking straight at the policemen, and one hand is gripping the long stick, making clear her intention to use it to lever herself to her feet. In the background, other men walk past, not even looking at her.
Mama, how did you find the strength? And why did it leave you so utterly when you thought the Poet had died?
My father turned the file towards himself, and winced when he looked down at the images. I thought that was a sign of sympathy for my mother, but he said, As long as you carry on looking at pictures like this you won’t allow yourself to admit you have reason to be angry at her.’
I touched my hand to my mother’s midriff. I remembered the bruises the lathi had left, remembered walking into her room as the Poet, crying, rubbed balm on to them. When she saw me she pushed his hand away and lowered her kameez to try to hide the vicious purpling of her skin. I ran and threw my arms around her, and though the Poet gasped as my body collided with hers, she only ran her fingers through my hair and kissed the top of my head.
‘Hello, my sanctuary,’ she said.
I looked up from the picture and saw my father — so unbruised, so safe.
‘Of course I’ve allowed myself to be angry.’ Saying that, I felt my heart quieten down. ‘I’ve been nothing but angry and resentful, Dad, for so long. For the leaving. Not for this—’ I gestured to the pictures. ‘I will not be resentful for this. How dare you make me try? The one thing I’ve hated most about this place — ever since I was a child — is all the attitudes here which tell me I should be angry about this, I should be resentful. No one says, be resentful of the people who made it necessary for her to choose between staying home to help you with your homework and going out to fight laws which say rape victims can be found guilty of adultery and stoned to death. No one ever says, be resentful of your father and stepmother and everyone else who didn’t go out and join that fight and make her burden lighter.’
My father’s face took on an expression that told me what I had said was so absurd he didn’t even believe that I really believed it. ‘What, so now you’re angry Beema and I didn’t get beaten up and thrown into prison, leaving you and your sister to look after yourselves when you were eight and twelve?’
‘Stop it. Stop doing that. She made one choice. You made another. And it’s purely a matter of perspective which one of you let me down. At some abstract level, I really do believe neither of you did. But it’s just hard sometimes to know that in my heart.’
‘In your heart, she takes up so much place that there’s almost no room left for the rest of us — let alone for anyone new.’ His tone was slightly peevish, and that made it impossible for me to be angry.
I looked at his neck again and felt such tenderness that I almost cried out. Let us leave this room, Dad, and meet again somewhere far away from every shadow around which we’ve peeped at each other all our lives, and let us talk. Let’s talk about who you are, who I am. Let’s talk about the heroism of staying at home with your children, and the heroism of leaving them in order to fight. Let’s talk of the archaeologist you wanted to be, and why you wanted to hold history in your hands. Let’s talk about losing Mama. Let’s talk about the simple pleasures of finding order in the working of an electric fuse. I never saw until now that my ordering, if not ordered, mind is your mind.
‘If it’s any consolation, I know she’s far from perfect, Dad. I know she has her faults.’
His eyes opened wide and there was such fear in them that I glanced over my shoulder, muscles tensing to face the threat that must have entered.
‘Has her faults? Fourteen years later you’re still saying, has her faults?’ He reached across the table and caught me by the elbows. ‘Aasmaani. Aasmaani, your mother’s dead.’
I knew they’d been saying it, all of them, for years, but it was the first time I heard the words. I knew it would happen some day, and I thought I’d be prepared, but I wasn’t. I wanted to hit him, simple as that. Wanted to strike the mouth which had uttered that obscenity.
I stood up. ‘Get out of my flat]’
‘No.’
‘Get out!’
The connecting door swung open and Rabia came running in.
‘What happened? Dad, what did you say to her?’
My father pushed his chair back and stood up slowly. ‘Something I should have said many years ago. Aasmaani, she is dead. She is dead. There’s no other explanation. She is dead.’
‘Rabia, get him out of here.’
But Rabia only took our father’s hand in hers. That was the betrayal for which nothing had prepared me, and I felt such desolation it took away all my will to argue.
‘She was miserable with her life.’ Dad reached for me, but I drew away from him. ‘She couldn’t see a way out of it. She left the house and never came back. She was last seen walking towards the sea. She never came back. Put it together. Allow your mind to do what it does best. Put the pieces together.’
‘I have. But you’ll excuse me if I don’t choose the same pieces you do.’
Dad crossed his arms. ‘Fine. Educate me, then. What happened to Samina? She’s still alive — yes? Yes?’
‘Dad, don’t,’ Rabia said.
Our father held up a hand to stop her. ‘Enough, Rabia. You and your mother have tried it your way for years now. It hasn’t worked.’ He turned his attention back to me. ‘Go on, Aasmaani.’
‘Dad, she could…’ Rabia started, and then broke off.
‘I could what?’
‘You could become the way your mother became when the Poet died,’ Dad said. ‘Except, you won’t. And if you do, we’ll find a way to help you. But I can’t tiptoe around you any more and allow this to continue.’ His face softened. ‘Darling, why force yourself to believe she’s alive and staying away from you? Don’t you see that damages you more than the truth ever could?’